


They Way It Has Always Been

by Leidolette



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-22
Updated: 2014-09-22
Packaged: 2018-02-18 08:25:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2341646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leidolette/pseuds/Leidolette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loyalty is a strange thing. She does not even <i>like</i> Thranduil, for the most part. And yet she would die for him in an instant.</p><p>He knows it too, of course. Or else she would not be captain of the guard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Way It Has Always Been

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



Loyalty is a strange thing. She does not even like Thranduil, for the most part. And yet she would die for him in an instant.  
  
He knows it too, of course. Or else she would not be captain of the guard.  
  
Despite the friction between them, Thranduil does not harbor the slightest shred of doubt for his safety at the hands of the captain of the guard. The same could not be said for every king in Middle Earth. There is a surety of his position that few who live outside of elven realms could match.  
  
She does wonder, sometimes, how she has earned his trust so implicitly. Especially since she feels at her worst around him. She becomes aware of every defect in her sword stroke, every wrinkle in her uniform, her slight accent. Her common ancestry. He does not let her forget any of her less-charming attributes.  
  
But he keeps her.  
  
It's not like she did not have to fight for the position. There were competitors, many of them older and well-connected.  
  
She still fights to prove herself now. Except these competitors are younger and hungrier. Or at least as hungry as these Greenwood elves can be. They are still well-connected, that, of course, hasn't changed.  
  
She wonders how well he knows her mind, her feelings. Fairly well, she supposes, suspected _tendre_ for Legolas aside. She reminds herself that understanding does not always mean compassion.  
  
It is during the imprisonment of Thorin's dwarves that Tauriel learns more about her king.  
  
"Are you ready, my lord?"  
  
Thranduil does not answer right away, and continues to look intensely at the illuminated book in front of him. Tauriel stands at attention and tries not to fidget.  
  
When his eyes finally turn to her she is struck again by how strangely blue they are. It is funny that she should be surprised; they're the same color as Legolas', after all. And yet, she is unsettled all the same.  
  
"Yes," he says impassively, and rises from his throne.  
  
"The party awaits at the South entrance." She follows a half-step behind as they exit the great hall without another word.  
  
The hunting party is a fine affair. The lords and ladies in attendance wear practical clothes, yes, but Tauriel rarely sees riding breeches stitched with gold thread in the usual bands of hunters who go out in search of daily table meat. Legolas is not among them, and Tauriel is unlikely to get much conversation from anyone else. She resigns herself to a long trip.  
  
They do not travel along the Elven Path path, or even near it. That area is patrolled through duty alone, for the benefit of those travelers that are not elves. Though privately Tauriel thinks that duty to other beings in Middle Earth has not been a high priority for Thranduil for some time now.  
  
It's just as well for their party. The great path attracts the worst sort of beings in the Greenwood who are attracted to the exotic, easy prey that wanders in. Though travelers cannot be harmed while their feet are firmly on the road, often creatures follow a group's journey and simply wait for a wayfarer to wander out of sight of the path for one reason or another, and then they attack. This strategy is more successful than one might think. The only upside to the darkening of the Greenwood, Tauriel thinks wryly, is that there are less and less travelers and merchants every year.  
  
Many travelers down the path think the wood is devoid of all wholesome animals, that what lives in the new Mirkwood is dark or altered in some way. Untrue, of course, at least for the most part. Animals live wherever they can, and give no thought to what seems terrifying or strange to sentient beings. But they do avoid the path if they can -- to avoid the travelers' arrows and the beasts that hunt the travelers in their turn.  
  
So when the king calls for a hunting party, it is to hunt ordinary stags and rabbits -- not anything insidious. The group has middling luck as they make their way from the palace. Most of the nobles are only half-interested in shooting game, and the guards are busy keeping a lookout. It's mostly an excuse to breathe fresh air and socialize.  
  
"Halt." Thranduil brings his hand up and makes a quick fist. The party comes to a quick stop. "The Captain and I will make our own way from here. We will rendezvous here at sundown." The look in his eyes brooked no argument.  
  
At the edge of the glade they leave behind the complement of the king's personal guards and  the lords and ladies. There is some confused muttering, but everyone acquiesces to the split. Now it is just her and Thranduil. She is uneasy; it's a rare enough occurrence for the king to call for a hunting party, albeit a small one. It is stranger still for him to leave them behind. For all that she knows he is rankled by the rumors that sometimes swirl around her and Legolas, he must know that special treatment like this is only bound to encourage them.  
  
They do not talk as they stalk softly through the woods. What little communication that is necessary is accomplished by quick, traditional hand signals developed by Elvish hunters long ago.  
  
For all his opulence, Thranduil knows how to travel in the forest. His step is light, but quick and sure. He is master of the forest just as surely as he is master of the palace. She wonders if he could just leave the Greenwood, if he wished, and travel the earth. He should have no trouble supporting himself. Does he ever tire of being king? The thought first strikes her as stupid: does anyone tire of having their way? But... maybe he does. Has he ever felt the way that she has on long nights when the wind blows through the open window and she imagines that she can smell the faintest trace of towns and campfires?  
  
He motions her towards an area of the forest that she rarely roams. They run swiftly through the underbrush, over fallen trees and streams. Tauriel loves this, all of it. The smell of moss as she breathes in big lungfuls of forest air and the increased beating of her heart as they traverse the Greenwood at a pace that a Man or a Dwarf could never match. Everything else is driven out of her head as she concentrates on her footing and Thranduil's signals.  
  
The terrain around them begins to turn rocky. Tree roots wrap around enormous boulders and jagged crags sticking up from the ground form miniature cliffs. Soon she is squeezing herself between natural columns and gaps in the stone barrier.  
  
Then there's a clearing. Any clearing or meadow in the Greenwood is rare enough that Tauriel takes a moment to appreciate it. A moment is all she needs, though, to notice that not everything in the small field was as natural as the oaks and the granite.  
  
A partially toppled chimney lay mixed with the other stones on the forest floor. A couple hinges and a crumbling lock hung by a thread from moss-colored rectangles that once were door planks. There is a collapsed hearth on the other side of the meadow and another next to a stand of elms. Odds and ends are scattered about, slowly being reclaimed by the forest.  
  
Everything has been long abandoned.  
  
The sight of the ruins disturbs her somewhat. She could have sworn that she knew every inch of these forests. Mirkwood keeps secrets even from its inhabitants, she supposes.  
  
Thranduil speaks, for the first time in what seems like hours. "Do you recognize this place, Tauriel?"  
  
"No."  
  
"It's not so widely known. But not hidden either."  
  
She wonders who knows of this place. A few well-read scholars? The previous captain of the guard? Or maybe many people do, and just do not concern themselves with the matter. That would not surprise her.  
  
"Dwarves were here, once," he continues. With his thumb and forefinger he picks up a half-buried item from next to the hearth. A hand plane, the wooden handle long since mouldered away. He stares at unblinkingly, and cocks his head slightly, as if he hasn't seen anything like it before. He lets the tool gently drop out of his hand to the ground.  
  
"Not many. A small settlement, no more than forty."  
  
"What happened to them?" Tauriel imagines all sorts of dark things.  
  
"Several hard winters, one after the other, and better opportunities amongst their kin. Not an unusual story."  
  
"I didn't think that you would suffer dwarf encroachment on your territory," She wonders if she is being too impertinent by questioning his actions, even if the decision was made long ago.  
  
Thranduil seems unbothered.  
  
"They were watched, of course, and had they been more prosperous I may have felt differently. But as it was, they were here for only a few years, and then time washed them away. As it always does."  
  
The worn stone and the half-buried walls do indeed speak to the force of time.  
  
Time never seems to pass in the Elvish city. What must it be like in mortal towns where the passing of a few centuries could change everything? Tauriel finds the thought almost dizzying.  
  
"I thought dwarves preferred to live underground, or in mountains?"  
  
"As of late, they have been living where they can."  
  
Tauriel wondered what exactly Thranduil would consider 'as of late'. "Was this mercy, then?"  
  
His gaze turns towards her. He says nothing, just inclines his head, indicating for her to elaborate.  
  
"Letting them build a settlement on elvish territory, it seems like a merciful act. But the dwarves in the dungeon..." She trails off. She has been playing with fire too much today.  
  
But it seems that he's in an imperturbable mood. "The dwarves in the dungeon do not deserve mercy anymore than they deserve a dragon. There may very well be another King Under the Mountain one day. Time has a way of circling back, we need not help it along."  
  
He gives the clearing one last long look. "Come, let us rejoin our fellows." He leads her out again, past the tall, moss-covered stones.  
  
The journey home is not as silent, and, after a time, Thranduil speaks:  
  
"It is strange to me that you wish to travel beyond the Greenwood so strongly." His unblinking, pale eyes unnerve her. They are unusual, even for an elf. Legolas has the same eyes, but the gaze is different.  
  
"Curiosity, my lord," she says lightly.  
  
"Is that truly your only intention? To satisfy your curiosity?"  
  
It was. But what Tauriel ached for inside her chest felt so much stronger than the simple word 'curiosity' implied. She wanted to see endless plains without a tree in any direction, to know the strange ways of Men, to swim in the wide sweetwater lakes until she was beyond sight of the shore. She wondered if he would understand that need. But it felt silly enough in the confines of her mind that she did not voice it.  
  
"Is not the the pursuit of new experiences and knowledge a lofty enough reason?"  
  
"What do you believe to be out in the world, Tauriel? Beyond these woods there are houses and towns, farms and fields. And beyond that there is more of the same. Dwarven faces, human faces, faces of the myriad races that inhabit the corners of the earth -- after a while there is less and less difference."  
  
He turns his face towards the tree line on the Eastern side of the clearing, as if he can see through them over the leagues and leagues of Middle Earth. She almost believes that he can.  
  
"Only in the West, over the sea, is there something different."  
  
Tauriel doesn't know how to feel about that. There had to be more. There must be. And yet every decade there are more and more Elves like Thranduil who grew weary of this earth and this sky. Who withdraw from so much around them.  
  
Sometimes she feels as if she were born in the wrong age. When she reads the antique histories or hears the old ballads, the stories are filled with adventuring elves who quest and fight and dance their way across Middle Earth. They lust for life.  
  
That is not the way of elves any longer.  
  
There are times Tauriel feels like a child next to her king. How could she not? He is so much older, has seen things that she could only dream of. Strange to think that even the men who occasionally trudge through the forest weighted down with their poorly made wares have seen more of the world than her.  
  
Then there are times that Tauriel feels like she is the only one in the court with any sense of responsibility. Even now, when the sun is high and its rays worm their way through the thick canopy, she can see a dusting of cobwebs in the hollow of a fallen log and the rustling of some creature in the underbrush as it flees from the pair of elves. Normal forest noises, perhaps, but not for certain. Does the presence of such fell creatures bother no one else? Legolas, of course, but too many others of the Elf King's court are content to feast and read and contemplate the trees around them. Tauriel is not old, and it is so hard to remember the haziness of her early childhood, but she knows that things have not always been this way.  
  
They shoot some game on the way back to the clearing where they will meet the hunting party. It was supposedly the whole purpose for this trip, after all. Tauriel takes two coneys and ties their feet together so that they hang over her shoulder. Thranduil catches sight of a cream colored rabbit through a minuscule gap in the trees. He notches his arrow in one smooth motion.  
  
It's a perfect hit. The rabbit is shot right through the eye.  
  
Later, when she follows the trail of dwarves towards Laketown, she does not even feel the slightest bit disloyal.  
  
She even wonders if a small part of him will give her his blessing, even. He knows her, after all.


End file.
